The Music Library is a specialized library supporting academic programs in music performance and education, interarts studies, musical theater, and dance.

Originating in the teaching collections of the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music (founded 1877), the Philadelphia Musical Academy (1870), and the Philadelphia Dance Academy (1947), the Music Library's collections are strong in performance and study score editions, scores of twentieth-century schools of composition, jazz transcription anthologies, and songs of the contemporary American theater.

In addition to its holdings in canonical and theoretical subjects central to the Western tradition, the collection continues to be developed in interdisciplinary studies, jazz and blues, music folklore, pedagogy, the psychology of music, and music entertainment economics.

Overlooking Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts, the Music Library occupies space in the historic Merriam Theatre building (named the Schubert Theater prior to 1991), adjacent to the Academy of Music. The facility consists of two sections joined in the center by its Circulation & Course Reserves Desk: on one side, a Reading Room with study space surrounded by the Reference Collections, adjacent to the circulating collections; and on the other, a Listening Room with individual carrels and small rooms with audiovisual monitors. Included, too, are a Music Education Resources center, a keyboard workstation, and a photocopier.